Book of Hours: Description of Contents (4)

    Before I attempt to explain the mystery pages, let me show another example of them, to give a clearer idea of what they looked like:

    As I have said, these pages are in the same type of script as the main text, but more simply produced, and consist of the parts of the Office of the Dead which are missing from the gold-illuminated text. They are followed, in a more casual hand, by the prayer "Deus propicius" ("merciful God"), and they are complete in themselves. Before attempting to explain their insertion here, let us take another look at the omission of the second and third parts of the Office of the Dead from the gold-illuminated text.
    This omission is very clearly and specifically marked. The first part of the Office of the Dead ends with an "et cetera" and the Gospel reading from John  follows immediately, on the same page. There is no question of anything missing here. It was clearly a part of the scribe's intention to omit the second and third parts of the Office of the Dead. And yet such an omission was unheard of. No Book of Hours would be complete without the full text of the Office of the Dead.
    Together with this intentional curtailment of the Office of the Dead we have another singular and curious feature, already noted - the damaged painting, illustrating the Office of the Dead. What explanation could there possibly be?
    First, let me attempt to eliminate the possibilities I do not think likely. I do not think these "mystery pages" were taken from another source and matched to this book at a later stage. For one thing, they are written on exactly the same kind of vellum and marked out for seventeen lines of text in exactly the same way as the rest of the book. Seventeen is not unusual, but many Books of Hours had a different number of lines, and different line spacing. Furthermore, the script is in essentially the same variant of Textus Quadratus (which had many variants), differing from the rest of the book only in the capitals. I could be wrong about this, but it seems unlikely that these pages came from another source. 
    It is possible that these pages were commissioned at a later date, to replace sections of the original which had got lost or damaged. Normally, this would be the most logical explanation, especially given the damaged painting, but it doesn't explain why the Office of the Dead breaks off and is followed by the Gospel Lesson from John.
    A more likely scenario, to my mind, is that the master scribe died. Several scribes - three or more - were probably working simultaneously on the text of the manuscript. This would not have been unusual; many Books of Hours were produced by "workshops", especially those which were written (like this one) after the advent of printing. However, it is likely that the paintings, border illustrations and illuminated letters were all done by same person - the "master" scribe. He completed the Calendar pages, the Hours, the Penitential Psalms, the Litany, the first part of the Office of the Dead,  the Gospel Lesson from John (though why it was placed immediately after the first part of the Office for the Dead remains a mystery), and possibly one or two other sections no longer extant. He also completed the 'Obsecro te' (only part of which survives) and, probably, the 'O intemerata' (which does not survive) and the Suffrages of the Saints, which come at the back of the book. However, at the time of his death he had not begun on the second and third parts of the Office of the Dead. There being no one available with the skills necessary to insert the illuminated lettering, the capital letters of these two parts of the Office of the Dead were done in a simpler way by another hand.
    That is indeed a possibility, but it does not explain why the Gospel Lesson from St. John comes immediately after the first part of the Office for the Dead. Here, then, is another possible explanation.  Roger S. Weick, Painted Prayers: The book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York, 1998, p. 99), says that people, "depending on their piety and their pocketbook, felt free to add" all kinds of "ancillary prayers" to their Book of Hours, and "personalized their prayer books the way modern people accessorize their cars (and for some of the same reasons)". Clearly, what he has in mind here is embellishments and adornments, but perhaps this Book of Hours shows us the other side of the story - a merchant who fell on hard times, and could no longer afford to pay the scribe for the work as originally conceived. The Lesson from John, annexed to the Vespers of the Office for the Dead, was, along with the completion of the Matins and Lauds of the Office of the Dead, part of the compromise he and the scribes arrived at.
    This last theory seems to me to be the one which best explains all the facts. Whether it is true or not, though, the main point to be stressed is that, despite appearances, these "mystery pages" appear to be an integral part of this Book of Hours. The way the previous section ends indicates that the scribe intentionally ended that section of the text at that point, suggesting that these are not replacement sheets and the sections which they "replace" were never actually written.
    I have discussed this middle section of the book in relation to the pages which precede it. Now let us take a closer look at the pages which follow it.
    The final pages of the book revert to the same format as the earlier text, but there are slight differences in the calligraphy. These differences are particularly noticeable in the shape of the foot of the letters. The short downward stroke to the right which gives the effect of a downward-pointing triangular shape at the foot of, say, the letter "h" in the first part of the book is elongated and followed by a thin line angled upwards in the same letter in the last pages of the text. While there is some variation between individual letters in both sections of text, the differences between the two sections of text are sufficiently great to conclude that the latter section was the work of a different scribe. Similar differences also suggest that the Calendar pages and the Matins and Lauds of the Office of the Dead were also the work of different hands.
    The final pages begin with the prayer to the Virgin, "Obsecro te" ("I beseech thee"). However, the opening few lines are missing. Since they would not have occupied more than a few lines at the bottom of the preceding leaf, we must assume that there was something else before that, which is also missing. The missing section might perhaps be a second prayer to Mary, the "O intemerata" ("O immaculate Virgin"), which would normally follow this prayer, but in this case it does not. As in the case of the second and third parts of the Office of the Dead, there is nothing actually missing after the "Obsecro te"; the text continues without a break, but does not include the "O intemerata". Either the "O intemerata" was intentionally omitted from this Book of Hours, or (which I think likelier) it was placed before the "Obsecro te" and has since gone missing .
    Following the "Obsecro te" is a series of prayers beginning "O domine" (" O lord"). These are examples of the kind of "ancillary prayers" that Weick describes (see above).
    There then follows a prayer in French. There are one or two manuscript additions in later hands which are in French, but this is clearly contemporary and cognate with the rest of the text, and is written in the same hand. It is the only part of this Book of Hours which is written in the vernacular. It begins, "Si le dieu tout puysant pere eternel..." ("If god, our all powerful and eternal father..."), and covers some three and a half pages, before the Suffrages of the Saints, which begin with several further ancillary prayers.  The Suffrages of the Saints, like the Calendar pages at the beginning, are comparatively simple and unadorned (see picture below). There then follow four leaves of prayers written in two more casual hands, bringing this Book of Hours to a close.

    Many Books of Hours were literally read to pieces. Others reclined gracefully on library shelves from an early date, perfect time capsules, but somehow sterile. And still others were cut up and sold as individual leaves. This Book of Hours tells a different story. In addition to its mosaic composition, noted above, its introduction, its title page, the page numbering and various additional leaves containing prayers in a variety of different hands, were all added at various points, most of them during the course of a long "working" life. The later manuscript additions date, from the evidence of the handwriting, from the seventeenth century, so for over a hundred, and perhaps as much as two hundred years (long after the fashion for such books had passed in the middle of the sixteenth century) this Book of Hours was being used as an aid to worship. Through the years, bits have been added, and other bits have gone missing, just like any organic growth. The printed vellum leaf at the back of the book, indicating that it was rebound in 1733, the pencilled price of one pound fifteen shillings (yes, really!) on the inside cover, the small and modest inscription "EW2", showing the book's provenance from the library of the great Pennysylvanian book collector Edwin Wolf - all these, too, make holding this book in my hands a powerful reminder of our history and heritage.

John Wilson   
July, 2000